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External Relations of the Pontic Greek Cities in Hellenistic and Roman Times: a Multidisciplinary Approach

Project PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0054, financed by CNCS (UEFISCDI)

No. 68 / 05. 10. 2011

The Black Sea (ancient Pontus) has always been an area of convergence and antinomy resulting from the contact between influences from different cultural areas and the local cultural traditions. Throughout almost two centuries of historiographical debate, a number of basic works and valuable studies have been elaborated, yet none of them provides a coherent picture of the external relations of the Pontic Greek cities during the Hellenistic and Roman times. Against such a background, our project appears as something of a novelty, both nationally and internationally. The proposed research is meant to fill a gap in the complex study of the Black Sea region and it will lead to a deeper understanding of the dynamics of this area, as well as of certain political, social-economic, cultural and religious phenomena during the Hellenistic and the Roman times.

As regards the main project concepts in the current scientific context, we will, first of all, thoroughly consider the peculiarities of the Hellenistic period and of the imperial age by relating them to the Pontic world as a peripheral region of the oikoumene, as well as an interference area between the Mediterranean civilization and the Eurasian steppe. In addition to this we will pay attention to the difference between the ancient and the modern understanding of the idea of ‘external relations’, and to the degree to which the public and the private external relations can be separated. Other concepts to be considered are those of the ‘foreigner’: immigration and emigration, inclusion and exclusion, social status and religious manifestation, assimilation and resistance to assimilation, etc.

We would like to announce the International Symposium “Mobility in Research on the Black Sea Region (PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0054 and PN-II-ID-PCE-2012-4-0490 to H2020)”, organized in Iaşi, July 5-19, 2015, within the research projects:

External Relations of the Pontic Greek Cities in Hellenistic and Roman Times: a Multidisciplinary Approach

The „Other” in Action. The Barbarization of Rome and the Romanization of the World

We would like to announce the publication of the collective book Interconnectivity in the Mediterranean and Pontic World during the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, ed. by Victor Cojocaru – Altay Coşkun – Mădălina Dana, Mega Publishing House: Cluj-Napoca 2014, 708 p. (including 62 plates). It comprises the papers based on the presentations made at the International Symposium from July 8-12, 2013, organized within PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0054 project. The book was meant as an important step towards accomplishing the major project goal – publication of a collective work, which would reflect, in a more complex and compelling way than before, the external contacts maintained among the urban Pontic communities. We would like to underline that a number of foreign specialists not involved in the project itself published/ contributed with publications in the above-mentioned volume (among them Altay Coşkun who is co-editor of the work). By editing a collective volume, which comprises the studies of 31 specialists from 9 European countries, as well as researchers from Turkey, USA and Canada, we consider our project goal successfully accomplished. More details can be found on the link: